1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing technology.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are viewers for interchangeably displaying, one after another, a plurality of photograph images stored in a memory device, such as a hard disk drive, according to a switching instruction from a user for changing a display image. In order to avoid a situation where an image process such as a decoding process can no longer catch up with image display, technologies have been suggested for prefetching and processing image data in an order set according to the degree of probability of being displayed.    [Patent Document No. 1] US Patent Application Publication No. 2009/0295977
With an increase in the performance and capabilities of digital cameras, a format is defined for summarizing and recoding a plurality of image data items that are interrelated. A standard formulated by the Camera & Imaging Products Association defines a data structure for recording a plurality of image data items and defines a format called “Multi-Picture Format” in which this data structure is used.
In the Multi-Picture Format, a “multi-view” is defined as an image type. The multi-view is subdivided into three types: panorama; disparity(stereoscopic); and multi-angle, and each subdivided type specifies a display format in a viewer. The image types are determined by setting an image-capturing mode by a user at the time of image capturing with a digital camera. A plurality of image data items that have been captured are put together as a single image file containing an image-type code by an internal circuit of the digital camera. With the generation of various types of photograph images by digital cameras, it is requested that viewers are provided with functions for suitably reproducing image data.